I was surprised to get my paper this morning only to find it devoid of a single word about the historic Supreme Court rulings yesterday on gay marriage. You have a story on your website this morning, but again there was nothing in your paper.

I find it strange that Walmart dropping Paula Deen despite her Today Show apology made the cut as newsworthy to The Courier. How is it that a ruling affecting the civil rights of millions of American’s got trumped by Paula Deen?

Abby Milner

Russellville

Go figure

I have been reading many of the comments concerning the NKR “No Kill Russellville.” I think this is a very charitable idea, however, I am a bit perplexed about some of society’s thought processes. We want to save all these unwanted poor animals, but turn around and say it’s okay to kill unwanted, innocent, unborn human beings. Help me understand this paradox whereby we place higher value on the lives of animals than on human beings.

Also, Val Fisher’s comment, “Any dog is what his owner makes him out to be; it’s not the dog who’s the problem, it’s the owner who makes him that way.” Couldn’t this same argument be used for guns, which are inanimate objects in and of themselves and can’t even be trained to do anything except what the owner does with them?

Celeste Durbin

Dardanelle

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Ms. Durbin, it's fine that you care about many things, but your comments about abortion and animal issues falsely assumes too many things: I don't think those NKR animal people said anything about abortion, after all, so why would you think that they are choosing one life over another? As you obviously must know, it is perfectly possible to avoid the false dilemma you hypothesize simply by valuing humans AND animals. And if we're really going to generalize about society, then maybe we should be more honest about whether animals or humans are valued more. 10 BILLION animals are killed every year for food in the US alone. A little different picture than you're painting.

Perhaps you have missed the point of the comment. Of course they said nothing about abortion, but Ms. Durbin has made the observation that human life is in fact much more valuable than animal life, simple. We have murdered over 50 million humans, though the term murder cannot in any way be applied to the disposition of animals. Would you care to trade the use of animals for food for the unborn babies we have killed? It's too easy for any of us to think we are above basic survival when we live in the land of plenty, where the bounty of this land gives a person the opportunity to choose not to eat any meat, yet still thrive at a minimum. If you take away this present luxury, you take away the debate altogether. Animals are NOT people and will never be, no matter your feelings about animals.